Vampiress Review: "Bit"

The Gist:  A small town girl is turned into a vampire when a brood of feminist vampires take interest in her during her first night in Los Angeles.

Female Vampire Factor:  It's a feminist lesbian coming of age film with vampires so pretty much everyone right?

The lead character is Laural (Nicole Maines)

Small town girl from Oregon who goes to stay with her brother in L.A. for the summer to find herself and day 1 just kind of goes off with a bunch of women she doesn't know and is turned into a vampire. Then spends the rest of the time basically doing the same stupid slacker stuff most 18 year old non vampires do while ignoring her gay needy best friend she left behind and her family. As all this is happening her vampire friends are fighting a literal war with slayers and playing vampire superhero killing men they've determined are evil.

Then you have the vampire clique

First up is the leader of the clique "Duke" (Diana Hopper).

Turned by Dracula himself in New York in the 1970's.  She was glamoured to be with him as she herself is a strict lesbian.  When she got the opportunity she turned on him and is keeping his heart to prevent his return.  She has since deemed that no other man can be turned.


Izzy (Zolee Griggs)

The vamp who took interest in Laurel that got her into the situation.  She was supposed to be feeding on Laurel but ended up falling for her (Izzy fed on Laurel anyway with Duke making the call to turn her). 


Frog (Char Diaz)

The glamour of the group and seemingly the only straight woman as she is usually the bait when the girls plan to seduce men before feeding on them. Pretty sure she's named after the family of vampire hunters in the Lost Boys.


Roya (Friday Chamberlain)

She's your stereotypical masculine lesbian character who basically just stays in the background and barely talks.

Finally you have Dracula's brides

The dark haired one ends up being the loan survivor of the attack that killed Dracula as she killed him herself and joined Duke.  She's actually the first vampire seen in the film.  As the film starts she had just turned a man into a vampire and was caught doing so by Duke and the group.  They kill him and sentence her to isolation in a hole.

Final Opinion:  Have we seen this story before?  Yeah Blood Angels, Cold Hearts, Lost Boys, We are the Night etc.  I guess if a story works it works.  What separates this film from those?  Not much other than maybe it's a lot less sexual than most of those films other than Cold Hearts since it centers more on the fledgling vampires life issues than the vampirism which only really comes into play in the films final act as she finally loses control from not feeding.  Otherwise most of the vampire groups hunting is done in montages as the movie is mostly about Laurel with the vampires just being background characters.

The one thing I will mention is that the Laurel character is supposed to be transgendered but it's never outright said at any time in the movie unless I missed it which makes a lot of the stuff that goes on with her not make much sense if you don't know this in advance.  It's hinted throughout the film that she's different and struggles with acceptance.  There's a lot of people talking throughout the movie about how much she's been through and how proud they are of her. The first thing she asks her brother in L.A. is if his friends will accept her and her brother at one point goes on a rant on having to defend her to her parents and being tired of her needs always coming first growing up. Even Vlad (Dracula) when he first encounters her has a one liner where he says "I suppose it is the new millenium" after looking her over which is the one line that eliminates the unmentionable thing they're discussing being that Laurel is a lesbian which otherwise the movie could have gotten away with (It's established well before that point that Vlad is fully aware of lesbians and has no issue with them for the statement to be about that).

Problem is instead of the beating around the bush they do, there was a clear scene in the beginning at a graduation party where this could have been addressed head on so the comments characters make about it in the rest of the film wouldn't be so cryptic.  Since it's not ever actually said you're leaving it up to the viewer to have either read up on the films production (which mentions it) or to have done enough research on Supergirl TV series actress Nicole Maines to know she herself is trans since that's not an easy guess just using the eye test.

So without that info it just kind of comes off as your standard situation of Hollywood casts a glammed up actress to play a character that would never have the problems her character would have since she looks like any other young eye candy Hollywood actress in a film mostly walking around in very distracting (in a good way) booty shorts like it's a Micheal Bay film.  That little bit of info would make her a much more sympathetic character or just not address her lifestyle at all.

I give this film a Vampire Beauty Rating of 4 out of 5.  I highly recommend it and it has pretty high re-watchability.  I think it does a much better job of telling the story that the Second Lost Boys film attempted. I only wish Laurel would have struggled more with her vampirism and less with her social life.